Friday, 28 February 2014

Articles How Much Allowance Have I Got Left? By DJ Forrest

“How much allowance have I got left?”

By DJ Forrest

In the 10th
Episode of Torchwood in Season One, the lives of three people from the 1950’s
were the responsibility of Torchwood Three.
Catapulted into present day Cardiff they had a lot of adjustments to
make, one of which was how much in abundance the foodstuffs they’d been
rationed on for years was now readily available in much larger quantities.

Ianto Jones issued the three travellers from
the 1950’s a £25 weekly shopping allowance.
Emma told Ianto that her dad was only paid £10 a week back in the ‘50’s
so receiving a higher allowance seemed like she’d just struck gold. Entering the store stocked full of Christmas
delights, they were introduced to colour televisions, films on a disk in a box
(DVD’s) and scantily clad celebrities on the front cover of magazines in full
view of children. Times had most
definitely changed!

It seems hard to imagine
what it must have been like living on rations, surviving on coupons for a few
ounces of butter and jam that would have to last a week, and feed a
family. That your petrol that you fill
your car with HAD to last for some time before you could fill her up
again. Unlike these days when you fill
your tank and away you go for as far as you can travel – although to some of
us, once a tenner has been used up, travelling comes to a complete standstill
unless it’s not too far to walk. In the
1950’s there would have been less pollution from exhaust fumes given the rationing
during and after the war, less money, less fuel, less of everything, would
hardly make a dent in their carbon footprint back then.

So what was rationing
and why did it start?

Governments had to feed
their nation during the War but to ensure that there was enough food to go
around, after cargo ships travelling from abroad with food were bombed by the
enemy, rations were imposed, limiting each family, and each individual with a
certain amount of food each week.

On September 30th 1939
ID cards were issued to every man woman and child in the UK, these were needed
in order to purchase your ration coupons.
The coupons themselves were used on a weekly basis and children under
the age of 16 were also given them. They
were similar in size to the Green Shield Stamps and were taken from the books
so you couldn’t reuse them. Although you
each had a coupon you were still limited to how many lbs of meat and ounces
sugar and butter you could have and that had to last you a week so there were
no sly sandwiches before bed, or a sneaky bowl of cereal.

If you lived in the
countryside, on a farm, there was more of an abundance of food, plus there were
rabbits in the fields to provide the meat, there were the wild birds, and fish,
there were crops, vegetables. I would
imagine a fair few were snagged or poached to put a meal on the table.

Rationing in the UK
began on 8th January 1940 when sugar, butter and bacon were targeted
under the rationing laws.

By 1946, soap, clothes
and coal were rationed. It made a lot more
sense to me then why people broke into railway depots to steal the coal, which
was slower burning and different coal entirely to that which went in the
fireplace at home. But it was still coal and it would eventually burn when it
reached a certain temperature and threw out the heat.

With clothing I suppose
that’s where the term ‘hand-me-downs’ came into fashion. When I was a kid I
often recall the family holidays to Wales, and my parents and grandparents
would offload several large binbags of clothing, from children to adults that
we’d all grown out of but was still in relatively good order, some almost like
new. This was something my family had
always done, even during rationing, what they received back, was meat (rabbits)
and dairy produce, but it wasn’t a form of payment, it was good will and
because nobody liked cheese on the farm and the rabbits were in abundance.

Bread rationing came to
an end in 1948 but it wasn’t until Feb 5th 1953 that sweet rationing
was finally over. Up until then children
were seriously limited in their sugary delights. Imagine if sweets were rationed now, there
would be no large slabs of chocolate; the large jars of sweets behind counters
would be limited to a quarter of a pound a fortnight or a month. Imagine having to suck slowly to savour the
flavour!

“We’d only just come off
rationing in ’53.” John Ellis told Ianto
as he stared at the vast array of food in Asda supermarket. But that’s not technically true. Although bread, petrol, soap and clothes
rationing was over by 1950, food rationing hadn’t completely ended until July 3rd
1954.

Sometimes I think
rationing would be a good idea again, it would certainly help in reducing our
intake of junk food and perhaps teach us how to look after ourselves when we
know how limited we are with resources and perhaps we’d value things more, we
wouldn’t be so negligent in our care of equipment, clothing, machinery, petrol,
the environment. We’d eat only when we
needed to eat, not just eat for the sake of eating. You appreciated things more
back then I think and we’ve lost that over the years.